


Fooled Myself

by dragons_SRSunn



Category: Guardians of Ga'Hoole - Kathryn Lasky
Genre: POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 10:28:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29276952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragons_SRSunn/pseuds/dragons_SRSunn
Summary: Eglantine's thoughts and feelings about her shattering.
Kudos: 4





	Fooled Myself

**Author's Note:**

> This was really written by a friend who was too shy to get her own account.

I knew Nyra wasn't Mum.

I think I always knew it, deep down.

Nyra doesn't look like Mum at all. Her face is too big and her facial feathers are too white and she has a scar. Mum didn't have a scar. Nyra got the scar when she killed Strix Struma and Otulissa attacked her.

If it had been Kludd pretending to be Da, that would have made more sense. Kludd looks like Da. He wears his metal mask, but I saw his face when he and Soren were fighting. He looked like he wanted to murder Soren. He _was_ trying to murder Soren. It was terrible. Da never looked like that.

But Kludd's face, the feathers, the shape of his eyes-it all looked so much like Da. And Soren. Soren looks like Da, and he looks like Kludd too.

Soren says I look like Mum. I don't see it, mostly, although I have a little speckle by my eye just like that one she had. But besides that, I don't see that I look like her.

Usually.

Sometimes when I'm half-asleep I'll see my reflection and think it's Mum and I'll jump and turn around-

-and then I wake up fully, and she isn't there.

Nyra doesn't look a thing like Mum, yet I believed she was for so long. Even though she looked different, even though she acted different-I still thought it was her.

The flecks shattered me. Apparently, I had fleckasia for moon cycles and I didn't even notice. Nobody noticed. When an owl is shattered, he or she is dazed and confused and will believe pretty much anything told to them.

But it wasn't just that.

When Ezylryb was shattered in the Devil's Triangle, he knew something was wrong. He just wasn't able to do anything about it-he was barely able to concentrate to fly for more than two wingbeats at a time.

I also knew something was wrong. But I didn't do anything about it; I didn't think about it or talk to anyone about it. Except Ginger. I just went on believing that Nyra was Mum.

"Subliminal messaging," Otulissa called it. She said that Ginger was putting flecks in my nest when I was asleep, and she was probably also whispering my dream to me-whispering about a lovely hollow in the Beaks, and an owl there who was Mum. She'd been doing that for months. So by the time I arrived at the Beaks, I was ready to believe that _any_ owl in there was Mum. I probably would have thought a crow was Mum. It's a form of hypnotism, Otulissa said.

But it wasn't just that.

Why did Ginger do this? Why did she do this to me? We were good to her, here at the Great Tree. We healed her when she was injured in the siege, and when she got better she got a hollow to sleep in-and, later, me and Primrose as hollowmates-and we taught her how to read. We were kind to her. She was almost approved for joining a chaw.

Did she believe so much in the goal of the Pure Ones that she was willing to do anything for them?

I wasn't like that, was I? When I was stone stunned? I don't remember being stone stunned. I remember before, and I remember after, but I don't remember actually living with the Pure Ones; I only remember when I look at isinglass or something like it. It's the same with all the other owls from the Great Downing.

Otulissa says that if we looked at isinglass long enough, our memories would come back permanently. But I don't want to. I don't think the other Great Downing owls want to either.

I'm afraid of those memories. I'm afraid of what happened to me, of what I might have done. Kludd pushed Soren out of the nest when he was a barely-fledged owlet-who knows what I, as a young stone-stunned owl completely in thrall to the Pure Ones, might have done?

I wonder if Ginger was stone stunned. She didn't act like it when she was at the Great Tree. But maybe it's like the moon blinking at St. Aggie's-they're moon blinked when they're young, so all they know is complete obedience to St. Aggie's, and when they're older they can sort of think for themselves, but they're still completely loyal to St. Aggie's. Maybe it was like that.

Soren doesn't talk about St. Aggie's. I don't know as much about it as you would think the sister of one of the only owls to escape St. Aggie's would know. I know about the moon blinking, and how the legends of Ga'Hoole help resist it. I know that they want flecks. I know that they want to conquer the owl world.

Like the Pure Ones.

I was a Pure One for a little while. I was almost a St. Aggie's owl, too.

Soren has daymares about it. He doesn't talk about them, but he talks in his sleep sometimes. He says things like, "Not my wings!" or "Hortense! Don't fall!" or "Fly, Gylfie! Grimble! No!"

I know that Hortense was a spy in St. Aggie's, sent by Ambala to try to rescue at least some of their eggs. Everyone calls her Mist now. She and her snake friends helped save Soren when he was hurt once. But I don't know how St. Aggie's found out she was a spy (they must have, right? Or she would still be there?) or how she got out if she can't fly well.

I didn't know who Grimble was, so I asked Gylfie.

She said that Grimble was an owl who had worked for St. Aggie's, but unwillingly. He was a good fighter, so they wanted him on their side. They told him that if he worked for them, they wouldn't snatch his owlets. He agreed-who wouldn't? They tried moon blinking him too, but apparently it didn't work right. Maybe it works better on younger owls than older ones. Grimble and Gylfie each figured out that the other wasn't moon blinked. Gylfie and Soren asked him to teach them how to fly, so they could escape. He did. He said he needed them to help in the library, but really he taught them how to fly, where no one was there to watch them practice. Grimble told the guard there was a fight going on so he would leave, leaving the space there open for Soren and Gylfie to leave. As they flew out, the general of St. Aggie's came in, saw what was going on, and killed Grimble.

The whole time Gylfie told me this, she wilfed.

I think Soren is different because of St. Aggie's. It's not just that we're both older than we were in the nest. It's more than that.

I wonder if I'm different too. From the Pure Ones, from being stone stunned, from the Great Downing, from being shattered.

I used to think-hope-that even after everything I went through, I could still be a normal owl, doing normal owl things like staying up as late into the day as you can just for the fun of it and whispering with your best friend and having hunting races with your brother. 

But I don't think I am, anymore.

A normal owl wouldn't get shattered by an owl she thought was her friend. A normal owl wouldn't have been fooled in the first place. A normal owl wouldn't be captured by the Pure Ones _twice_ , like I didn't learn my lesson after the Great Downing. A normal owl wouldn't steal things from the Great Tree to bring her enemies. A normal owl wouldn't lead her best friend and her brother and so many owls of the Great Tree into danger. A normal owl wouldn't have to murder an egg to escape the flames alive.

It was just an egg. It hadn't even hatched yet. It was Kludd and Nyra's egg, yes, but it was Mum and Da's grandchick. The egg could have been a good owl. After all, me and Soren are Kludd's siblings, and we're good owls, aren't we?

Aren't we?

We could have raised it, Soren and me. We could have taken care of it. We could have told it stories and given it its favorite foods and explained to it about its parents and raised it to be a good owl.

We'll never have that chance now.

I still see the egg, in some of my dreams. I'm trying to hold on to it, but it's slipping, slipping out of my talons, and then it falls and falls and falls.

Barn Owls lay at least two eggs at a time. There's going to be at least one more egg, or more, and it will be raised by the Pure Ones-what will be with it? What will it be like? Will it try to kill Soren too?

It doesn't seem fair. Nyra is going to get to be a mother, and she got to pretend to be _my_ mother, while Mum barely got a chance to be my mother at all. 

I knew she wasn't Mum, deep in my gizzard, even though I was shattered, I think.

But I was so desperate to believe that Mum was alive, that she hadn't mysteriously died, that Soren hadn't seen her scroom at all, that she still loved me even though I didn't look for her after I was rescued from the Pure Ones, that I was willing to believe anything, go along with anything, explain away anything, just for a few more moments of believing my mum was here and loving me and alive.


End file.
